Hannspree SD8073 review

Hannspree's 8in photo frame isn't as stylish as Jessops' 10in Acrylic frame, but it's inoffensive.

Buttons are hidden round the back, and a small remote replicates these. Build quality isn't great - the stand's plastic lugs had already broken off when our review unit arrived.

A mini-USB port allows connection to a PC for transferring photos, but you'll need the bundled adaptor cable if you want to plug in a USB flash drive. More inconvenient is the fact that, while you can browse to a folder on the drive using the File Manager, you can't view photos or videos from there. You have to go to the Photo option where all photos from multiple folders are collated in one huge list, making it incredibly slow to get to the images you want if there are gigabytes of photos on your drive.

The menu system, which can be slow to respond, stops you at every turn. If you're viewing a slideshow, you can't change the input without first going to the main menu. If you're on the main menu, you can't jump to a slideshow using the dedicated button. Clearly, the designers didn't think things through.

At least Hanspree decided that an on-and-off timer would be useful. Slideshow intervals can be set to 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 or 180 seconds, and you can choose background music from any MP3s in the root folder of the selected drive.

You can adjust brightness, contrast and saturation, but the default settings are the best left untouched. Colours are accurate, and contrast is good. Viewing angles aren't great, but at least colours don't invert when you stray too far off centre.

Despite its lack of a power-on timer and poor slideshow intervals, Jessops' 10.4in frame is a much better choice for £89.

Author: Jim Martin